Thinking of getting some second hand as something different. Any good? Easy to home service?

Or should I just stick with getting a fork from one of the big 2?

Any experience or views welcome! Thanks

Don’t know who makes them (in house, or farmed out)

But swaying from the big 2, I’m running a lightly used pair of Manitou forks from 23 years ago that have stood the test of time and have a set of X-Fusion Vengeance from a good few years ago on one of my HT’s that are superb and have been faultless

Been running some F353 one forks for a couple of years. Really rate them, ride is perfect for me, stiff enough, really supple off the top, plenty of support. Build quality is to my untrained eye, better than the big two.  In the two years + I’ve been running them they’ve not missed a beat, and dropping the lowers to service (they include spare wipers and seals in the box) shows clean internals and no signs of ware. Support wise TF are the service partners

I have an F232 fork on the newly built up bling bike but only got to ride it once on a short shakedown ride before the weather turned grim and I suspect the bike won’t be going out again until spring. It seemed to ride well enough but I didn’t really mess around with it or give it a good workout.

A bit old news but I had some XMM’s about ten years ago. Much better than the comparable Fox or Rockshox (Float 32 or Revelations) at the time in my opinion and the best fork I’d had until the first Charger dampered Pike. I’d have a modern pair no worries after my previous experience.

They certainly used to make them in house, after they’d bought out Pace and shipped the equipment over. Couldn’t say now.

I was looking at the F535 ONE recently, they have some interesting tech. Couldn’t find them for sale anywhere new. The damper is travel-specific so it appeared there’s no option for changing travel.

Mate had some on a Banshee Paradox. He hated them though and changed them.

My F232s are every bit as good as my RS SID Ultimates.  They actually seem stiffer, but are also 20mm shorter (bike to bike) so not necessarily comparable.  

There’s some intriguing tech in that fork.

It’s always interesting to see the variety of solutions outside Fox/RS, e.g the tunable air or coil -ve springs used in Formula & DVO forks, Formula’s swapping damper cartridges, or the triple air chambers that Manitou & EXT use.

DT’s combination air/coil spring and travel-dependent HSC looks nice!

The only experience I’ve had was 10 years ago getting some on a canyon xc hardtail – the bike arrived and the forks didn’t have the collets that secure the axel glued in. So not only did DT Swiss QC not pick this up, but neither did canyon when they built the bike. Fixed under warranty immediately (by Pace) but ment that I couldn’t ride the bike for a month straight after buying it. Put me off direct sales completely.

I really liked my F535 (27.5, 160mm) for 90% of my riding – only time it felt inadequate were some badly landed jumps in bike parks.
There were no different coil springs for coil-assisted spring so it is possible that it doesn’t work for all riders as nicely.

I run F535’s on my hardtail, they have a very distinct character to them because of the position sensitive damping, they’re no big plush pillowy mashmallows they have a very taught, controlled feel. I hate a divey fork so they suit me just fine.

Big trick is to get the right amount of sag so that you’re in the correct part of the travel and the damping can do what it’s supposed to. Get this nailed and they’re otherwise fairly hard to mess up. But I can see how they could befuddle people as they’re very different internally to most other options out there.